Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

Paul Debreczeny

Stories provide an ironic viewpoint on life in nineteenth-century Russia

The Collected Stories

Nikolay Gogol and His Contemporary Critics

A Study of Alexander Pushkin's Prose Fiction

The Other Pushkin

This study of the effect of literature on readers, both as individuals and as members of social groups, focuses on Russia's national poet, Alexander Pushkin, as a model for investigating the aesthetic and social functions of literature. The individual reader's response to the literary text is demonstrated in Part One through a broad range of memoirs, diaries, and correspondences in which Russian readers recorded their reactions to Pushkin. Among the reactions are testimonies that Pushkin's works helped readers form their personalities, provided cathartic relief in times of stress, and aided them in releasing their suppressed emotions. In his analysis, the author draws on various psychological approaches, from studies of perception through developmental psychology to psychoanalysis. Part Two exposes the extent to which individuals' aesthetic responses are conditioned by their social environment. Against the backdrop of Russian social history in the early nineteenth century, the author describes the dissemination of new aesthetic norms, notably the relations of the Russian literary elite to "lowbrow" and "middlebrow" groups. In this context, he analyzes a number of Pushkin imitations (with Pushkin's responses to them) and links Nikolai Gogol's development as a writer to the social groups surrounding Pushkin. Among the other topics discussed are the popularization of Pushkin on the stage and his inclusion in school textbooks and anthologies. The aura surrounding the personality of an author is the subject of Part Three, in which the author shows how Pushkin's death in a duel with a foreigner contributed to his emergence as a symbol of the Russian nation, and how deep-seated anxiety about national identity gave rise to the Pushkin myth and to the canonization of the poet as martyr. The author also describes how the combined effect of the widespread reading of Pushkin's work and his legend as martyr allowed him to remain Russia's main mythic figure despite the Soviet Union's attempts to supplant him with Lenin. Throughout the book, theoretical arguments are buttressed by close readings of Pushkin's works, especially The Prisoner of the Caucasus, Eugene Onegin, Poltava, Egyptian Nights, and several lyric poems.

Alexander Pushkin and Russian Culture

Social Functions of Literature

Walter W. Arndt

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is best known for his great achievments in poetry, but the fixtion he wrote in the last decade of his life was to have a tremendous impact on the subsequent development of Russian prose, influencing such later writers as Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. This is a new translation of all his prose fiction, from his famous story "The Queen of Spades" down to unfinished stories and fragments that appear in English for the first time. Pushkin's non-fictional A History of Pugachev, also translated into English for the first time, is included because it furnished the historical background of his novel The Captain's Daughter. The translator has taken care to achieve a balance between faithfulness to the original and readability in English, and several Russian editions have been collated to establish an accurate text. The translations are annotated to place each work in its historical context, and to eluvidate passages not easily understandable to today's reader. Appendixes present a chapter that Pushkin deleted from The Captain's Daughter; fictional fragments; Pushkin's outlines of projected works; and the apocryphal novella The Lonely Cottage on Vasilev Island.

Complete Prose Fiction

Alexander Pushkin

Set against the backdrop of the the Pugachev rebellion against Catherine the Great, The Captain’s Daughter was Pushkin’s only completed novel and remains one of his most popular works. The inexperienced and impetuous young nobleman Pyotr Grinyev is sent on military service in a remote fortress, where he falls in love with Masha, Captain Mironov’s daughter—but then the ruthless Cossack Pugachev lays siege to the stronghold, setting in motion a tragic train of events.This volume also contains another work by Pushkin on the same theme, The History of the Pugachev Rebellion,which presents an impartial, meticulously researched history of the revolt, and was condemned as being subversive on its publication. Together, these two works provide a fascinating insight into the character of the peasant who tried to overthrow an empress, written with the clarity and insight of Russia’s greatest poet.

Paul Debreczeny

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